Spain thought it had stopped the transshipment of Russian oil off its shores

Transshipment of Russian oil from ship to ship has resumed off the coast of the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. The Spanish authorities believed earlier that it was stopped.

Bloomberg reports on the resumption of transshipment of Russian oil off the coast of Ceuta. The agency cites data that the Sakarya tanker with cargo from Baltic Primorsk entered the territorial waters of the Spanish exclave. After that, the ship turned off the data transmitter, and its actions were not visible from satellite images due to cloud cover.

However, according to the agency, the vessel left the territorial waters of Spain, turning on the transponder and indicating that the draft has increased, that is, 730 thousand barrels have been unloaded.

A similar operation could have been carried out by the tanker Cankiri. He arrived with a cargo of 1.2 million barrels from Novorossiysk.

According to the AIS of the vessels, both tankers are already heading to Murmansk, where they are due to arrive on November 18 and 23.

The territorial waters of Ceuta have become a popular place for transshipment of Russian oil since December 2022, when The EU banned the import of Russian oil and, together with the G7, set a price limit for third countries of $ 60 per barrel.

The Spanish authorities were forced to respond to circumvention of sanctions right under their noses.

"Since August 2023, Urals has not been overloaded in the Ceuta area, as the Spanish authorities have warned local firms about possible violations of the price ceiling," Bloomberg writes.

Western countries are trying to deal with the fact that Russian companies are circumventing sanctions and, since July 2023, oil from Russia is sold above the price ceiling. But so far their influence is limited.

This is also influenced by the fact, for example, that in There are enough other places in the Mediterranean to overload Russian oil. For example, this is done near Ceuta — off the coast of Morocco, but these are already international neutral waters. According to AIS, the Habrut tanker is located in that area this week, which can carry about 2 million barrels at a time.

Earlier, the authorities of the EU countries tried to influence the transshipment of Russian oil in other areas of the Mediterranean Sea. For example, the Greek military began permanent exercises and closed one of the bays of Greece, where they were actively overloading oil and petroleum products. In that area, operations almost stopped, but they were transferred to another part of the Mediterranean.

Obviously, tankers most often try to use bays and territorial waters due to storms, which may complicate the transshipment of oil from tanker to tanker.